The excessively high cost of production in underground coal
mines has made the survival of many coal mines around the globe
economically non-viable. The global competitive coal market
speaks itself of the desirability of a lower operating cost in
conjunction with a higher productivity performance, particularly
in underground coal mines, and calls for an optimal production
planning under a host of constraints. Such a task of optimal
planning is not an easy exercise like that of traditional planning
based merely on intuition, experience and subjective judgement.
It essentially demands a thorough understanding of the complex
interaction of mine sub-systems for judicious application of
optimisation tools and techniques available with operations
research. A few large mines around the globe have made an
effective use of a sizeable number of operations research
packaged programs for optimal decision-making (Grayson,
1989). The success of practical applications of operations
research techniques made in a variety of mining problems in large
mines in different parts of the world will hopefully make inroads
to smaller mines in years to come. The present paper is an addition in the series of such
applications of operations research tools to mining problems,
particularly with reference to an underground coal mine in India.
The paper is based on research work (Jawed, 1990) and deals
with the development and use of a mathematical model for
production planning in underground coal mines under multiple
objective environment subject to a host of constraints.